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Major Spam Hosting Provider Offline – global spam drops.

San Jose turned out to be something of a ground zero for global spam, as hosting provider McColo was just taken offline leading to a huge drop in global email spam. Early reports suggest that McColo was basically a safe haven for spammers because they didn’t ask many questions despite unusual bandwidth use, complaints about their clients, and more. It’s not clear yet whether McColo they *actively* participated in the spamming or simply were willing to host the spammers without any appropriate oversight on activity.

It also appears that it was the Washington Post reporting and talking to the bandwidth providers Hurricane Electric and Global Crossing that led to Hurricane and Global Crossing shutting down McColo.

Clearly there should be better forms of oversight available to the internet community than newspaper reporters. We’ve reached a “tipping point” where anonymity is causing a lot more harm than good and the community needs to find ways to police spam, scams, viruses, and malware.